The event sprang from a Facebook group for Detroit bassists. Last year someone had the idea to recreate the famous photo of Harlem Renaissance era jazz musicians photographed in front of a Harlem brownstone. The idea was, let's all meet at the Motown Museum, bring your favorite bass and we';ll take the photo. It went over so well that now it will be an annual event. I missed it last year, but this year I attended with my two kids. And of course, I just happened to take an Alembic with me.

Mica may even have some recollection of the Music Man bass my oldest son is showing.

I see some of the usual suspects (Fenders, MusicMans [two Bongos, actually], Ibanezes)--and a few nontypical axes in there. Can someone ID the round green one (second row to right of middle) and angular white one (second row far right)?

Here is a message Mike sent me about hIs bass: " Michael Rich 8:20pm Sep 9 you asked me about my bass so let me tell you my story. Vaccaro took over kramer and designed a new neck. I was on disablilty (due to a broken arm) at the time and I found out they had open shop in NJ. I called them and asked if I could get a tour and if i could buy a finished neck. years before i designed and copywrote the body design and i decided to marry the two. we had an awsome day and he told me all od the storys including the michael jackson drama way before it happened. well before i could finish the company closed shop. I at the the time was an electronic techinican so i knew guitar electronics. I studied with anderson howard who was a student of lamont johnson so I understood bass construction. the body is my answer to fender's model. everything about it is based on a jazz / musicman... but with a twist. It has G&L passive pickups to give it the musicman kick but it has an active 3 band parametric eq preamp that I found in germany. the bridge used ibanez monorail detuner on each string but i found out you can't do that because the calibration was too sensitive. i installed a badass to compenstate. the next model will have a warwick bridge. just for show there is a programable led readout that will scroll a message while i am playing. i thought it would give the viewer a spaceage experiance. this model is made of basswood but i am using swamp ash for the next model. the paint job is a custom car paint with sparkles but the next model will be chrome to match the head stock. "